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Ask HN: WEI is reviled, but kernel-anticheats are lauded?
4 points by xeonmc on July 27, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments
It seems that people are generally receptive to intrusive anticheats as a necessary evil for participation, and even lauded with Valorant being the shining beacon of cheater-free utopia, that there are just no other way to attest the integrity of the players.

However, similar arguments are put forward by WEI proponents that it will, in a broad stroke, end DDoS botnets, that there is just no other way but to include this necessary evil. Yet, the counter argument besides the obvious ethical angle is also that the onus is on the server to make do with what information they can infer from available datapoints. Would the same argument not also apply to anticheat measures, though? That the onus is on the developer to intelligently discern illegitimate parties.

What is the distinction between the two just no other way arguments that made the likes of Valorant so readily accepted and applauded, while WEI is immediately reviled?




...Kernel level anticheat is really only lauded by people who don't really understand the far reaching implication of third party code in the kernel, or by those so invested in being beneficiaries of it, they're willing to make the trade of their own privacy for the chance to get into the theme park.

The problem with WEI is that, once again, industry actors are trying to take everyone else's freedom to run their computers as they see fit, by forcing everyone to embed this cryptographic garbage into their OS/browser/bootchain. Remote attestation is the gold brick paved road to hell.

I will not touch anything that relies on such things. It's just getting harder and harder to stay away from though because there are so many industries frothing at the mouth to utilize such measures to mitigate every imaginable form of sovereignty of the user over their own property.

The Industry talking heads will talk a big game about "oh, users can do it to too"... But I've yet to see anyone but maybe the to single digit % of developer or techically inclined person even try to tangle with these API's because the tooling is just godawful.


The reaction to these things is more situational than principled; everybody wants their own stuff to work and who cares about the others. Cinephiles collect DRMed Blu-rays while people who don't own a TV complain about the "bag of hurt". Creators support copyright while pirates want to leave loopholes open. Windows gamers embrace anti-cheat while Linux hackers deride it as a rootkit.


I don't think there is consensus there. For example, I refuse to play Valorant for exactly that reason: their kernel rootkit. I neither accept, nor applaud it.




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